Writing about the food, farmers, fishermen, and folk of Long Island's North Fork.

Religion

02/05/2018

When Harald Olson was a boy in Huntington, West Virginia, he lived in a large home with an altar and stained-glass window in his bedroom. His mother, a devout Catholic, had it built as a place for her only child to pray.

Harald has long since left West Virginia for Shelter Island, where he’s lived and worked as a caretaker, health care assistant and artist, but that stained-glass window has followed him around, if only in his imagination, an image from a former life that emerges in his work.

Ten of Harald’s paintings, some as luminous and jewel-colored as sacred windows, will be on display in his one-man show on December 9 and 10 at the David Rankin Studio, 126 South Midway Road.

Harald’s father was the golf pro at the Spring Valley Country Club in Huntington and golf coach at Marshall University after serving in the Air Force in the 1940s. Harald said,

“The upbringing I had from Dad mainly stuck with me.”

And by that he meant good manners and being polite. When Harald was 8, his father died, and three years later, so did his mother.

After a tumultuous period living with relatives, he entered Fork Union Military Academy near Charlottesville, Virginia. “We had to study for two and a half hours every night. You couldn’t move away from your desk,” Harald said. “It was discipline, and I needed it.”

In 1975, Harald turned 21, and was back in Huntington. Whatever wealth his parents had left him was gone, and he struggled to take care of the house and support himself without a family to help. “You can’t dwell on the past,” he said. “I don’t blame anyone.”

Seeing a television program about abstract art, he was seized with the urge to go beyond the drawings he had been doing all his life. “I got some bedsheets and tacked them to plywood I found in the house, and I found some paint in the garage,” he remembered.

Taking his first painting upstairs, a friend saw it, and Harald had sold his first work.Still trying to support himself, he spent two years working in a logging camp in the Tongass National Rainforest in Alaska, where it rained every day summer and winter, and the work was dangerous.

But logging was not the worst job Harald ever had. That distinction is reserved for driving a cab, which he did upon returning to Huntington. “I could pick somebody up who looked perfectly fine, and then find out a minute down the road they were psycho,” he said. “I had three robbery attempts.”

During these years, Harald married and divorced, and continued to draw and to make abstract art. When he was back in West Virginia, he started to sell his work, even settling a loan with one of his paintings.

He began to develop a particular approach to his work, building up layers of paint and sometimes layers of canvas and newspaper to make very thick, textured works. “I paint the first layer very quickly,” he said. “Balance, color, it’s got to have something worth keeping or I paint over it. Maybe some of it is representational, but I don’t think about it.”

Harald resists giving his painting titles because he feels that it compromises the way people experience his work. “An abstract painting is a thought,” he said, “People see different things.”It was through his ex-wife that he found his way to Shelter Island. He came here to work for one of her friends, who turned out not to need his help. But Harald met Lisa Perry on that trip and they became friends. “Lisa is like my little sister,” said Harald. “She’s got a heart of gold.”

In 2002, Harold left West Virginia for Shelter Island when Lisa offered him a place to live in exchange for helping her with her house. In the years since, he’s worked as a provider of home health care for a number of Islanders, while continuing to work as an artist.

After finding some canvases at the town Recycling Center, Harald began to paint larger works, and when the community of Shelter Island artists heard, people started giving him canvases to work on.

In 2007, with the help of Jean Lawless, he was in a group show at the Mosquito Hawk Gallery on Shelter Island, and then another group show, the Un-Hamptons Outsider Art Exhibition at Greenport Harbor Brewing Company Gallery in August 2011.

In January 2010, Harald had a solo show at Andre Zarre Gallery in New York City called “Pumps, Boxes and Glass Paintings,” based largely on work he’d done in a studio space that local builder Jim Olinkiewicz had given him.

In his 14 years on Shelter Island, Harald has befriended many people, and been the beneficiary of their love and care. Jim Olinkiewicz provided him with a place to paint and has been a staunch supporter of Harald’s art, “a good friend and a good man,” said Harald.

Artist David Rankin and his wife, writer Lily Brett, have also supported Harald, and his upcoming exhibit will be held in David’s studio, with the further support of Kenny McGuinness, the manager of the studio, and Allison Weibye, studio assistant.

And as far as Harald is concerned, he has a family; three cats named Jerry, Ziggy and Tinker, all 12 years old, who won’t put up with anyone but him.

“I bless my house when I get home. I bless my kitties,” Harald said. “And then I kneel down and say a prayer.”

Lightning round

What do you always have with you? My rosary.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? Where I live.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? I’ve never been there, but I think Arizona because it is warm and it gets no hurricanes.

What exasperates you? All the nonsense news.

Best day of the year on Shelter Island? Any warm day.

Favorite movie or book? I like atlases. I wonder what the map is going to look like in another age.

Favorite food? Eggs.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? Father Peter DeSanctis. His devotion to his cause. He is for real.

10/02/2017

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Roger Horowitz at the home on Menantic Creek that has been in his family since the 1960s.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on September 21, 2017

Roger Horowitz grew up on the Upper West Side, went to school in the city and spent every summer of his childhood on Shelter Island, where he learned many important life lessons.

One involved chicken.

Roger’s mother, Louise, used to buy chicken from a kosher butcher in the city, but in the 1960s you couldn’t get kosher meat on Shelter Island. Since the family couldn’t survive the whole summer without chicken, she bought from Bohack, the local supermarket at the time, where she discovered that chicken — and every other kind of meat — was significantly less expensive than the kosher stuff she had been buying all her life.

“There was a whole world out there of meat that was much cheaper,” Roger said. It was a revelation that fueled his interest in the business of American food, and how brands and labels are used by manufacturers to influence consumers.

Roger is now director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology and Society at the Hagley Museum in Delaware. His book, “Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food,” won the National Jewish Book Award for the best book in American Jewish studies in 2016.

Before his parents bought the house on Midway Road that Roger still owns, they rented a cabin in Shorewood, where he remembers being a 4-year old playing in the goldfish pools and formal gardens of the Victorian Manor House. In 1962, a hurricane came through and Roger’s family spent the night in the Manor house to ride out the storm.

When the power went out, they lit candles, and Roger, who must have been a real pest, decided to see what would happen if he put a fork into the flame, and burned his finger.

When the family drove out from the city, they usually encountered horrific traffic, with Roger and his two sisters stuffed into the back seat of a Volvo sedan with shedding cats and no air-conditioning. On every trip, they stopped at the same diner to eat. One time his older sister was sick and threw up at the diner, and in the chaos that ensued his younger sister found a stray cat which she managed to keep by asking their father’s permission while he was distracted.

Edmund turned out to be a great cat.

“The drives were always deeply unpleasant,” said Roger, “which heightened the appreciation for Shelter Island once we got here.”

On day one of each vacation, Roger and his siblings completed a self-imposed checklist of activities — swim in Fresh Pond, take a dip at Wades Beach, ride a bike to Tarkettle Road and back — to mark the commencement of a summer free from supervision. “The mothers would report to all the other mothers where we were,” he said, “but we had freedom.”

A 4 p.m. softball game topped off every afternoon, played in a vacant lot owned by the Ross and Levine families, just up Midway Road from Wades Beach. The pitcher was always an adult, usually Mimi Ross herself. Balls and strikes went uncalled to encourage everyone to swing. Every year a much-anticipated “Daddy’s Game” was held, during which one of the fathers would inevitably pull a hamstring, or trip and fall.

When Roger was about 14, his parents divorced, and their family summers on Shelter Island came to an end. His mother kept the house on Midway Road.

Roger’s mother, Louise, had a Ph.D and taught philosophy at Long Island University, but by 1973, she was out of a job. She entered law school, graduated in 1978, and practiced commercial law for the rest of her life.

“She was ferocious in conversation,” Roger said. “She took no prisoners. Not even her children.”

After the divorce, Louise brought a man named Alton Johnson into their lives. Al was an unlikely companion for a college professor-turned lawyer since he had little formal education and was a veteran of three wars, including Vietnam. He knew plumbing and carpentering, could fix anything, and showed Roger how to work with his hands. Al settled into the house on Midway Road, where he lived for 25 years until his death in 2001.

Meanwhile, Roger graduated from the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and eventually from the University of Chicago. But first he took some time off to work at a machine shop in Chicago called Chromium Industries, and then as an inspector of tools used in manufacturing televisions.

Roger had grown up in a household where no one worked with their hands. Getting to know Al Johnson, and working in manufacturing gave Roger a set of skills he’d never thought about. “There is a certain feel and sight that comes with using equipment,” he said. “I learned tactile abilities that human beings have but don’t always matter, abilities that, growing up in an intellectual Jewish family, I didn’t develop.”

Roger went on to get a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin, and joined the faculty of the University of Delaware, where he is now professor of History and Jewish Studies.

The house on Midway Road is still an important part of Roger’s life, even if he now lives far away. Roger and his wife, Jessica Payne, live in southern Pennsylvania, with their children, Lucy, 9, and Breck, 14. The family’s visits to the Island involve a five-hour car trip that takes them perilously close to New York traffic. Roger’s son, Jason, is 25, and often joins them.

Roger’s parents, who had been divorced for 40 years, both died one month apart in December 2010 and January 2011. His father lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico and his mother lived in New York City.

“The timing was very, very tough,” Roger said. “They brought me into this life. It was my responsibility, when they were leaving it, to make it easier for them.”

In keeping with his vocation as a historian of business, Roger said the major change he’s seen on the Island in the 50 years he’s been observing, can be measured in late-model cars. “You used to see Fords and Plymouths and Chevys, and now you see Lexuses, Range Rovers and BMWs.”

He also observed that as middle-class people have been squeezed out, the Island has become much more liberal. “Liberals are more open to government regulation. Out here that means a willingness to regulate short-term rentals, and to preserve public resources. As it’s become more crowded, a realization grows that you need to take care of these resources, rather than assume that nature will take its course.”

Roger measures time like a historian, with a long view of environmental challenges. “I’m very much the result of Shelter Island. I have an appreciation for the natural world and I believe that nature is tough, and resilient,” said Roger. “If you give nature a chance it will recover.”

03/02/2017

“What is the matter with Mary Jane?” is the refrain of A.A. Milne’s classic children’s poem, “Rice Pudding,” and the answer is one of the great lessons of cooking. Too many servings of bland food will drive you mad.

The essence of rice pudding is milk, rice and sugar, a blank slate. But almost every food culture has some version of rice pudding with spices and flavorings that evoke their cuisine; flavors that make bland food into comfort food.

It can be the tingle of cinnamon, or a vanilla pod. There are advocates for adding raisins soaked in bourbon to improve their flavor. This information was passed to me by a member of the Southern branch of the family, a group known for short life spans and dissipation, but it is true that almost anything marinated in bourbon comes out of the whiskey bath much improved.

When I started looking around to see what some of my favorite food cultures do with rice pudding, I found new flavors in kheer, an Indian rice, milk and sugar custard made with cardamom and saffron, or the pistachio and rosewater scented rice pudding of Turkish, Syrian and Persian traditions.

If you have ever stopped yourself in the produce section and said, ‘Wait, what would I do with a pomegranate?’ Naomi Duguid’s lovely new cookbook, “Taste of Persia: A Cook’s Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan,” has the answer. Part travelogue, part cookbook, and completely inspiring, the book includes a recipe for rice pudding that combines rice, milk and sugar with rosewater and ground cardamom, topped with chopped pistachios. My new favorite rice pudding preparation follows her lead on the cardamom and rosewater, with the addition of saffron, which imparts a mellow, nutty flavor and a warm buttery hue.

Lovely Rice Pudding

Serves 6

1/3 cup white rice

1 quart whole milk

½ cup sugar

Pinch of salt

Pinch of saffron

½ teaspoon ground cardamom, or 6 whole cardamom pods

3 tablespoons rosewater

¼ cup chopped pistachios

1. Pick a heavy 2-quart baking dish that is about as wide as it is high. Add the rice, sugar, milk, salt, saffron, and cardamom and stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar is dissolved.

2. Cook in a 300-degree oven, uncovered, for a total of no more than 2 hours. Every 30 minutes, stir the pudding with the wooden spoon, making sure the skin that forms on top is stirred into the pudding each time.

3. After an hour and a half, add the rose water and stir every 10 minutes, until the pudding thickens, the rice is soft and swollen, but the mixture is still liquid. When the pudding is done, it still looks quite loose, but will thicken as it cools.

4. Remove the pudding from the oven, cover, and allow it to cool to room temperature. Remove the cardamom pods.

5. Serve topped with chopped pistachios. Rice pudding is best eaten slightly warm or room temperature — never cold. If you are not going to serve it right away, refrigerate and reheat very slightly to serve.

Variation for raisin-lovers: Instead of the last four ingredients, put ½ cup of raisins in ¼ cup of bourbon, heat in a microwave for 30 seconds, soak for 10 minutes, drain and add to the milk, rice and sugar along with a stick of cinnamon. Serve with a light dusting of ground cinnamon.

09/19/2016

It was a sunny Friday afternoon in August, and although Dr. Nathanael Desire’s office hours at the Shelter Island Medical Center were over, he was still there.

Seated in the waiting room, Dr. Desire was telling me about his life, his work, and how the past three years as one of Shelter Island’s family doctors have strengthened his ties to the community. Suddenly, a very small member of that community appeared at the office door in his mother’s arms. He was having difficulty breathing.

Dr. Desire stopped talking in mid-sentence — my question was “How do you handle a crisis?” — listened carefully as the mother of the coughing child explained the situation, and guided them both to an examining room, saying, “Hey, big fellow. I’m Dr. Desire. How you doing?”

The doctor was in.

Dr. Desire was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he grew up speaking mostly Creole at home, and reading French at school. He was almost 10 years old when his family moved to Brooklyn, where he went to the elementary school around the corner and ran home to watch Spiderman on TV. Today his English is a perfect testament to his ear for language, and the educational value of Spiderman.

His was a large family with two brothers, and four sisters. He attended John Dewey High School, went on to major in finance and investment at Baruch College, and went to work as a banker. But his real love was science, not business and he longed for a more caring profession. He left his job in banking and three weeks later was studying gross anatomy in medical school.

Dr. Desire met his future wife, Anthonette Banks, through his sisters. They were all friends, and the families also knew each other through the Seventh-day Adventist Church, an important institution in their lives.

The couple started dating when Anthonette decided to go to college in Massachusetts at Mount Holyoke. Nathanael was living at home, working at the bank, and began driving to Massachusetts on weekends to see her.

They married in 1996 in a three-week gap between the second and third year of medical school, “a little secret within the medical profession,” Dr. Desire said. “Around the break a lot of us got married.”

In 1998, he received his degree from the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, Old Westbury, and did his internship in internal medicine and pediatrics at Stony Brook, qualifying him to take patients of any age. He established a private practice in Bellport, and the Desire family still lives in Coram.

In addition to his extensive training in medical school, Dr. Desire has additional training in conducting the specialized immigration physicals required of people applying for a green card. He also does physicals for special commercial licenses, such as truck drivers, firefighters and other physicals with unique requirements.

“Not every physician does it,” he said. “People come to me from around the East End for these physicals.”

When Dr. Desire first came to Shelter Island, he was on his way from his Bellport practice to the San Simeon nursing home in Greenport. “It was winter, and I liked that I could drive from one end to the other and not much was happening,” he said. “So when I saw there was an Island Medical Center, I stopped in and introduced myself to Dr. Kelt.”

Dr. Desire and Dr. Ann (as she prefers to be called) have two children, 8-year-old Natalie, and 4-year-old Nolan. “A delight,” he said. “They are keeping us young.”

Nolan is left-handed in a family of righties, and Dr. Desire admitted that he bought a See-n-Say-style toy for his little southpaw — not realizing that playing with it would require Nolan to execute a move like a cowboy roping a calf to pull a string on the right and make the toy moo like a cow.

Nolan was diagnosed on the autism spectrum. Dr. Desire worries when he thinks of what it might mean for his son. “I’m level-headed, and see that he’s making progress, but as a parent it’s never fast enough.

There is tremendous hope, but there is also fear for the future.”

Dr. Desire said he leans heavily on God and prayer in his life. “If I am faced with a crisis, I pray about it, because God is the one who guides me,” he said. “The steadiness helps me a lot.”

Dr. Desire and Dr. Ann have built their practice around the idea that taking the time to talk with patients is good medicine. “Most of our patients appreciate the time we spend with them,” he said. “The insurance company does not value it, but we do.”

Having a conversation with a patient, he said, is the best way to get to know the whole person, and get a sense of who they are and where they are going. “I’ve learned that many of my patients first came to the Island with their parents or their grandparents,” he said. “Now that they are older, they’ve inherited this place.”

Sometimes these conversations take an unexpected turn. Recently, a patient mentioned that his father had worked in banking at Manufacturer’s Hanover, a large company that was taken over by Chase years ago. As they talked, Dr. Desire realized he knew the young man’s father from his banking days, a friend he hadn’t seen in 20 years.

“My dad’s in the waiting room now,” the patient said, and an impromptu reunion ensued.

In contrast to his practice in Bellport, where Dr. Desire saw a fair number of tick bites, but only rarely with Lyme disease, on the Island many more of those with tick bites develop Lyme. Aside from the frequency of tick-born disease, Dr. Desire said the health issues he sees on the Island are similar to what he’s seen throughout his years of practice; lifestyle-related illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

“The goal is to use as little medicine as possible to get the effect you need,” he said.

Now in their third summer providing medical care on the Island, Dr. Desire said he and his wife are starting to get a feel for the rhythm of the place. This year, they closed their Bellport office, committing themselves to their practice here. Their Island office is open three days a week in the winter and five days a week in the summer.

03/23/2016

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Brooke Bradley, who generally prefers to be outside, enjoying a winter day near her new Camp Quinipet home.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on February 18, 2016

When Brooke Bradley was a little girl growing up in East Tennessee, she loved her Girl Scout camp. That love abides.

The new director of Camp Quinipet came last fall to work at the historic children’s sleep-away and day camp — founded in 1922 — and has since been applying her decades of experience working with children outdoors.

“It’s a confluence of events that makes this experience so meaningful for kids,” she said. “Camp for whatever reason embeds these memories in children’s heads.”

Brooke grew up with a brother and two sisters in Kingsport, Tennessee, where her parents still live. She went to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville to study journalism, but when she discovered the school had a program that would allow her to carve out a field of study in outdoor recreation, she changed her major and never looked back.

After graduating, she went to work as a director of a Girl Scout camp in Atlanta. “Being outdoors, working with kids, I was hooked,” Brooke said, “I’ve been camp directing ever since.”

She married and she and her husband moved to Toccoa, Georgia, where they spent nine years working and living at a Campfire Boys and Girls camp, starting a day camp and an after school program. Their son John was born on Earth Day, 1988.

After Brooke’s marriage ended, she and John moved to Knoxville in the early 1990s. She went to work with the Girl Scouts for 13 years, at the same camp she had loved as a child.

One of her goals was to build the base of volunteers. Her efforts proved so effective that on “Love Your Camp Day,” over 600 people showed up to pick up trash — so many that they ran out of litter.

John grew up as a “camp kid” and graduated from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He now works as a farmer in Oregon.

Brooke went for a master’s degree and teaching certificate, but took a detour for a couple of years from camping to teaching. She still worked with children, only indoors, and she soon longed to get back outside.

She decided to work at Adirondack Camp, on Lake George, one of the oldest coed camps in North America, “the quintessential New England camp,” Brooke said. She started out running the swimming program, and when the administration offered her a full-time job, she relocated to tiny Putnam, New York.

Adirondack Camp has over 100 staff members, drawing an international population of campers. Charged with staffing the program, “I was looking for a Russian-speaking swim instructor, and an Italian-speaking fencing coach.” She recalled that departing Russian campers (possibly owing to an addiction to s’mores?) often made a trip to Walmart to stock up on marshmallows, which were not available back home.

In 2013, Brooke left Adirondack Camp to work at the Fresh Air Fund, a program that provides New York City children from low-income families a free summer camp experience.

She became director of the coed camp for children ages 8 to12, some with special needs such as autism and attention deficit disorder. Her job was to make the experience look and feel like camp, while helping kids learn social skills and make friends, all the while developing resilience to take them through life.

“I had to dig down deep,” she said.

For most of her career, the focus of Brooke’s work was on delivering a high quality, fun camp program; at Fresh Air Fund she was also looking to reinforce foundational values.

“We had twelve days with these kids, we were really going to try to touch some lives,” she said. “I will never again look at a camp program in the same way.”

Brooke’s first experience of Shelter Island came after she responded to a notice from the New York annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, seeking a new director for Camp Quinipet.

She was drawn to the position by a positive impression of the members of the Conference which, at a time when many churches are closing camps due to dwindling congregations and the financial pressure of skyrocketing land values, was looking to reinforce and extend the Quinipet programs into the Shelter Island community.

“Getting on that ferry is such an experience,” she said. “You’re leaving the mainland and coming to a world apart.”

An important goal is finding new ways for Quinipet programs to serve the community. The overnight camp currently serves about 100 children, with many campers coming from European countries. The day camp serves summer and local children and Quinipet is also known for the community sailing program that has introduced many children to boating. The camp offers financial assistance to families in need.

Brooke is looking at what it would take to expand Quinipet’s reach, for example, providing transportation from North Ferry to camp, so people from Greenport could get here more easily.

“I know that there are Hispanic children on the Island,” she said. “I want to make sure they know we are here.”

For families who are only here from Memorial Day to Labor Day, she’s considering early-season Saturday programs so parents can drop kids off for a day of fun, outdoor activity, while they are opening their homes.

Brooke’s vision for Quinipet’s future is not just professional; it’s personal, based on her own childhood experience of camp, and the positive impact it had in her life.

The recipe is timeless: Take a child between the ages of 7 and 17, add other kids of the same age, put them in rustic conditions with campfires, outdoor activities, songs and nature, and create a positive experience that stays with a child for a lifetime.

“I’ve learned,” Brooke said, “that we can really make an impact.”

LIGHTNING ROUND — BROOKE BRADLEY

What do you always have with you? A Maglite flashlight.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? Our beachfront at Quinipet.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Lake George.

Last time you were afraid? During the storm on January 24th. I’ve never heard wind like that. I though the roof was going to come off.

Last time you were elated? My entire family took my parents to Folly Beach, South Carolina for my mother’s 90th birthday.

What exasperates you? Housework.

Favorite movie? ‘Dirty Dancing.’ I knew the woman who owned the camp where it was filmed, Camp Chimney Rocks. She was so offended by the idea of dirty dancing that she never saw the movie.

Favorite food? I ate local scallops last fall. I’ve never had anything so delicious.

Most-admired elected official? Jimmy Carter. The most ethical person. A strong character.

Lily Brett is a rock journalist, essayist, author of seven novels with an international reputation and nothing in her background to prepare for life outside a city, let alone on a rural island.

Born in a German displaced persons camp in 1946, her parents were survivors of the Holocaust. When Lily was 2 years old, her family of three — all that remained of a once large and wealthy Polish family — emigrated to Australia.

Her parents found factory work. They didn’t have the means for a vacation, with one exception, Lily recalled. Her father paid a truck driver to transport them to a Jewish guesthouse an hour outside of Melbourne. Lily’s father was tied to the back of the truck while she and her mother rode in the cab with the driver, Lily’s mother yelling out the window to her father to confirm that he was still strapped in.

At the guesthouse, everyone stayed indoors throughout the day with the windows closed and played cards. “I thought this is what you do in the country,” Lily said.

Although she has learned to enjoy going outdoors, on Shelter Island with her husband, artist David Rankin, she’s often working.

Her last three novels were written entirely on Shelter Island, including “Lola Bensky,” based on her own experiences, which won France’s prestigious Prix Médicis Etranger in 2014.

She grew up with her parents and seven other Jewish families in a “terrace house:” eight rooms with one family in each room, one bathroom and one kitchen. She was the first person in the building to learn English and became a valued member of the community even as a young child.

“I thought it was fabulous,” she said. “I felt loved. There is something great about being 4 or 5 and being useful.”

Lily’s parents, particularly her mother, continued to mourn their family — all murdered in the Holocaust. Lily said they taught her that “we were so lucky to live in a country that was free of persecution, that gave us a chance, not at regaining any of the old life, but a chance of living in freedom.”

At 18, she was hired as a writer by Philip Frazer, one of the founders of the first Australian pop-music newspapers, “Go-Set.” It was 1965, rock and roll was taking the world by storm and Lily found herself interviewing superstars such as Jim Morrison, who she described as “cruel and indifferent,” and Jimi Hendrix, “a thoughtful, sensitive human being.” She added, “His hips stayed firmly in place throughout the interview.”

She covered the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, traveled extensively and developed an international reputation as a rock journalist.“I wanted my work to have a serious aspect to it,” she said. “I didn’t want it to be just frothy.”

Still it wasn’t exactly what her parents had in mind. “I was meant to be a doctor or a lawyer,” she said. “My dad said ‘better than Perry Mason.’ He dreamed of me doing good in the world.”

Lily met David Rankin when she was sent to interview David’s wife, Jennifer Rankin, a noted Australian poet who was terminally ill. Lily had been married for 10 years and had two children, Paris and Gypsy, who became friends with David’s daughter Jessica.

Soon Lily realized she had fallen in love. “I had a real gratitude that I found that sort of love,” she said, “And the most interesting person I had ever met.” They married in 1981.

In 1989, Lily and David and their children left Australia for New York. Their first experience of Shelter Island was in 1991, at the invitation of Philip Frazer, who, like them, had moved to New York, and Frazer’s wife, Cydney Pullman who had a home on the Island.

David immediately fell for the landscape, which reminded him of rural Australia. Unlike David, Lily had no experience of life outside the center of a city and wasn’t sure she wanted any. “Trees overwhelm me — too many trees,” she said. “I didn’t grow up with it. I never saw a vegetable growing.”

The first cottage they rented was infested with crickets, but they didn’t stand in the way of her work. “The owners saw me on the day we arrived. And then not until I emerged several months later … I think they thought David had murdered me.” She wrote her acclaimed novel, “Too Many Men,” that summer.

In 1995 when Lily learned she was shortlisted for a literary prize with a large cash award, David proposed a deal. “He said if you win this, let’s buy something on Shelter Island.” Assuming she wouldn’t win, Lily agreed, and forgot about it.

When she got a call from Australia saying she’d won, Lily prepared to renegotiate the deal with David. Too late. “As soon as he finished weeping with happiness,” she said, “I heard him on the phone with Shelter Island real estate broker, Cathie Perrin.”

As described by Lily, their search for Shelter Island property was the stuff of a real estate professional’s nightmares. After Cathie Perrin had driven them all over the Island, David told Lily, “You are not looking properly at things. You are not taking it seriously.”

They pulled up to a vine-choked acre of land on Midway Road near Wades Beach and Lily announced, “This is it.”

“You haven’t even stepped out of the car,” said David.

“I rolled the window down.”

“What’s so special about this place?”

“I feel it’s going to be sheltered from weather. And it’s a place we should be.”

The Island became essential to Lily’s creative productivity. “I don’t know that I could write anywhere else,” she said. “Everyone who knows my work knows Shelter Island. It’s given me another life.”

Her friendship with the late Cheryl Hannabury helped her understand what makes the Island community special, and different from urban life. One day, Lily and Cheryl were talking when they heard an emergency siren. “I said, ‘Oh, another ambulance,’” said Lily, “since it was a familiar sound in the city. But Cheryl said, ‘No, when you hear an ambulance on the Island, it means that one of us is in trouble.’”

Lily’s mother died at 64 of cancer and for years Lily grieved openly. “I think she would have been surprised and quite pleased,” said Lily. “Like most of us, she probably didn’t know how much I cared about her.”

Today, Lily’s father is 99 and living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. “Your age follows you around,” she said. “I hate it when they give the year of your birth and a dash. This is just asking for trouble.”

Her parents’ legacy is to be as good a human being as you can. “It’s all about love,” she said “My parents told me that nothing is valuable except for love.”

LIGHTNING ROUND — LILY BRETT

What do you always have with you? A beautiful silver Star of David a reader gave me at a book event in Germany. I use it for my house keys.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? My study.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Caffé Dante on Macdougal Street in New York.

Last time you were afraid? I was born afraid. You cannot grow up with parents who were in a refugee camp and lost all their family and not be afraid.

Best day of the year on Shelter Island? Every day, especially if the electricity hasn’t gone out.

01/11/2016

Wednesday was Epiphany, the end of six weeks of family get-togethers that began with Thanksgiving. In my family, three all-day feasts, four birthdays and a boozy brunch featuring unlimited shrimp cocktail marked this juggernaut of forced togetherness and winter sports, conducted in the caffeine-soaked frenzy of high-calorie foods.

This year, the holiday celebrations went particularly well.

We are Jewish and Christian and atheist and some of us have a spiritual life that we prefer not to label. We all like to eat, but not the same things. We have some locavores, some vegetarians, a pescatarian, a vegan and someone who only eats sweets (is she a sugartarian or a desserter?) And everyone, with the exception of the family dogs, is a critic.

This year several things did not happen. During a gathering at my mother’s home in Reno, Nevada, her ancient beagle did not climb onto the kitchen table — marvelous, at his age! — and eat an entire pan of stuffing while the family was gathering for Christmas dinner in the dining room. Not this year.

We did not prepare and consume foods that no one likes, such as plum pudding, a dish that sounds like it should be delicious, but never achieved greatness in our home, accompanied by something called hard sauce, which sounds like it should be inedible, but is delicious.

For many years my father read aloud the story of Jesus’ birth from the New Testament, but he didn’t read it straight. He added asides that were not part of the King James Version to see if the kids were paying attention. In particular his pronunciation of the word “myrrh” in Matthew 2.11 was baroque. He said it in a kind of multisyllabic vibrato that ended with a guttural noise that today we call vocal fry. He fried the heck out of myrrh.

My father has passed away, but we have kept alive his tradition of reading aloud to the children on Christmas Eve, with a new selection of sacred texts. One is “Christmas With Morris and Boris,” an excruciating tale about a simple-minded moose and a bear who schools him in holiday basics. The primary narrative tension is the increasing anger of the bear who, incredulous at the stupidity of the moose, finally loses it when Morris mistakes Santa’s beard for white feathers.

The story leans heavily on a series of terrible puns such as “Merry Kiss-Moose.” The sweet spot for this story is someone with the sense of humor of an 8-year-old, the approximate age of our oldest son when my husband began to stage an annual reading.

What no one can explain is why at the ages of 23 and 26, these “children” still insist on hearing “Christmas With Morris and Boris” read aloud every Christmas Eve.

My family observes some distinctive gift-giving traditions, one that is based on an event from the mid-20th century when my parents gave a pair of pocket knives in a glass presentation case to the 8- and 9-year-old sons of our neighbors, the Whitesells.

We learned later that moments after receiving the knives, the children were bloody. By the time of our next get-together, the gifts had been confiscated and the scars on the boys’ hands were healing nicely. To this day, such gifting is referred to in our family as being “Whiteselled.”

For example, my parents’ gift to my oldest son on his second Christmas was a plastic train large enough to ride around the house, with wheels that emitted a chugging sound and a button on the smokestack that unleashed a piercing whistle. Our boy called it “The Wake-Up Train.” There was no peace in our home until we took it away.

A related tradition on my husband’s side of the family is the “Forman’s Folly,” a gift that seems at first like the solution to a problem, but proves to be so useless or inconvenient that it ends up in the basement. For example, the coffee bean roaster of 1988, which achieved temperatures hot enough to vaporize hair, but took hours to roast a handful of raw coffee beans. And try finding someone to sell you unroasted coffee beans.

This year’s Forman’s Folly was the digital grill thermometer that is flameproof to 450 degrees and communicates with the chef via Smartphone. This gift resulted in the griller being summoned from in front of the television in the middle of a critical third-down play when the London broil reached 145 degrees and his phone made a noise like a tornado warning.

Towards the end of many weeks of festivities, I took my older son to the ferry so he could go back to his job in New York. He is one of the family’s more vocal critics, especially on the subjects of sustainability; “What a ridiculous waste of boxes and paper,” and lightly-spiced food, “Pass the Sriracha!” As we waited I asked, “Do you have any final, parting criticisms?”

“No, it was great to be with you,” he said. “But next year, more Morris and Boris.”

06/24/2015

Paul Shepherd has lived on Shelter Island his entire adult life, but his early childhood in Missouri, the “Show Me State” left a mark on him.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on May 21, 2015

Paul Shepherd likes to question authority. He calls himself a non-conformist, a one-time rebel, and prior to his election to Shelter Island Town Board in 2011, an outspoken critic of local government. Since becoming one of four councilmen, who along with the Town Supervisor make up the Board, he respects his fellow lawmakers he said, but often disagrees with them. Publicly, and vociferously.

Born in West Plains, Missouri in 1955, Paul left as a kid, but is quick to give the “Show Me State” credit for his temperament. ”It really stuck,” he said. “Just the way I am. I take nothing for granted.”

Paul’s mother Edith left Missouri, and her husband, for Shelter Island around the time of Paul’s third birthday. “She did whatever she had to do to get free and to protect me,” Paul said. He grew up with his older brothers, Jim, who now lives in Muscatine, Iowa and Gene who still lives on Shelter Island. His younger sister, Edith passed away in 2014.

“My mother was a rebel as well. A single mother in the 50s,” Paul said. “She and I had a tempestuous relationship.” He went to the Shelter Island School until he hit the pre-teen years. Then Edith sent Paul to follow his brothers at Bob Jones Academy, a strict, religious, “socially restrictive” school in South Carolina known for establishing discipline in the unruly. His dorm room housed five boys, included a double bunk, a triple bunk, and a prayer captain.

“I did well my first couple of years,” Paul said, “ But being somewhat naturally rebellious, I became too challenging for them to retain, so they requested that I not join them again. I wasn’t crazy about the authoritarian nature of things.”

He finished high school on Shelter Island, spent a couple of years at Florida Southern University studying horticulture, and dropped out because, “I was wasting my time and my money.” He came home in 1973 to work in landscaping, and later made the switch to carpentering. “I learned as I went, more from some than from others,” he said.

For eight years he worked with general contractors building homes and additions. In 1988, he went solo, determined to get new business by word of mouth, rather than advertising, and not “be a big-shot,” he said, because “I figured they paid a terrible price in terms of government oversight.” Since then, he has had steady work as a carpenter, and continued solo.

“I’m a day to day person,” Paul said. “My mom had higher hopes for me.”

Edith Shepherd worked for the Town as secretary for the planning board for many years, and died in 2007. “She did not live to see me on Town Council, she would have liked that,” said Paul.

Growing up without a father in the picture, Paul said he learned to do things on his own. “That’s the kind of thing that yields some rebelliousness,” he said. “Nobody told me what to do.”

Appropriately for a man who takes a dim view of laws, his partner of 37 years has been Jean Lawless. “We’ve been not-married a lot longer than most people have been married,“ said Paul.

Jean and Paul met when, acting on “word of mouth at a bar,” he went to tryouts for a new production of the Shelter Island Players. Although they lived across the road from each other, they hadn’t really met until they were cast as Pierre and the Ragpicker in “The Madwoman of Chaillot.” Jean has two children, and four grandchildren, Desmond, Milo, Ophelia, and Dutch.

Paul remembers Shelter Island in the 60’s and 70’s as a place decidedly more forested, less developed and more blue-collar than today. “Wintertime was a serious business here,” he said. Scalloping and fishing was a livelihood for many men, and “there was no overpopulation of deer, because deer was dinner.”

There was, said Paul, a lot of drinking. He reeled off the names of some of the local “gin mills” open year round in the 70s; The Candlelight, The Harbor Inn, The Pub, The Dory, The Chequit. “I quit in 1990. The party was over and it was time to go home,” he said. “I was never, ever the one to leave the party first.”

By today’s standards said Paul, local enforcement of laws against drunk driving on “The Rock” in the 70’s was more relaxed. Today, the separation between law enforcement and the people they protect is greater, he said, partly because of litigation. “There is more of a divide now. The stakes are higher — if you let someone go [without a ticket] and they go on and hurt someone. I don’t say that it is wrong. But it is what happened.”

In 2009 Paul, still a steadfast questioner of authority, made an unsuccessful run for Town Supervisor, as the Local Liberties candidate, a party name he made up when officials in Riverhead insisted he list a party affiliation. Subsequently he mounted a successful bid for a Town Board seat in 2011. “I never wanted to be someone who makes laws, because I don’t care for them,” he said. “You really want power in the hands of people who don’t want it so much.”

Now that he has crossed over to the law-making side of local politics, Paul says his perspective has shifted a bit as well. “An informed opinion is sometimes a softer one. I still have to be part of it. Otherwise I would be isolated, and what is the point of that?” Referring to his four colleagues on the Town Board, he said, “I’m in a bit of a marriage with these people.”

Prior to his election to Town Board, Paul was a vocal critic of local government, often airing his opinions in letters printed in the Reporter. “ If I have been quiet of late it’s because I have a job to do. That’s one of vexing things about it.”

“I tend to speak my mind,” he said. “My mind is a free-range animal.”

Lightning Round- Paul Shepherd

What do you always have with you?

“My pens, so I can make notes if something comes up.”

Favorite place on Shelter Island?

“Sachem’s Woods It’s got a good feel. I walk through every other day with my dog.”

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?

“Any place is as good as another. I have not left New York in 15 years.”

Favorite book?

“The Lord of the Rings Series. Tolkien had a strong sense of how to set up the battle between good and evil. I am always attracted to the underdog.”

Father Charles McCarron moved to Shelter Island in January, the new vicar of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church.

Last June his predecessor, Father Joel Ireland, resigned as pastor of St. Mary’s after less than two years in the parish. By all accounts, the events leading to Father Ireland’s departure were contentious and painful.

A professional who turns an ailing organization into a healthy enterprise is known as a turn-around artist.

“It’s what we call in the church business being a non-anxious presence,” Father Charles said. “As stuff swirls around, you are able to be present, not personalize things, try and see what is really going on, and help things heal.”

Father Charles brought with him a five-year-old Yorkshire terrier named Bogart and a gift from his former parishioners at St. Lawrence in Dix Hills when they heard St. Mary’s would be his next church — a 5-foot-tall statue of the Madonna and Child, originally carved in the 1930s for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Astoria.

Born and raised in the Fordham section of the Bronx, Father Charles was the only child of Scottish parents who met in the U.S. but had no family here. “Our street had a large concentration of Scots,” Father Charles said. “My playmates and babysitters were all Scottish people. I spent many summers as a kid in Scotland. I’m the only Yank in my family.”

Raised Roman Catholic, Father Charles’ early life centered around St. Nicholas Tolentine, aka “The Cathedral of the Bronx,” which was his church, grammar school and high school. Offered a full scholarship to Fordham Prep, he turned it down to stay with his classmates. “We were together from first grade through 12th. Most of us are still in touch,” he said. “Those were the days when the city was more like small towns. Very close.”

At Catholic University in Washington, D.C., he began his journey to the priesthood, becoming a postulant in 1973 at 17, the first stage to becoming a Capuchin Franciscan Friar. His director and mentor for those years was Father Seán Patrick O’Malley, who is now Cardinal O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston, one of eight cardinals appointed by Pope Francis in 2013 to reform the central administration of the Catholic Church.

Father Charles took a break from the seminary, moving back to New York where he became a social worker and a New York City probation officer working with violent first-time offenders in the South Bronx. “I held on to my badge,” he said, and held it up for inspection.

After a year he returned to the order, completed his studies for priesthood, and was ordained in 1986 by Bishop Francis Mugavero of Brooklyn.

In the 1980s the AIDS epidemic was beginning, and Father Charles began to work with people suffering from a disease that was not well understood at the time. “Clergy really were not stepping up. Another priest told me that the chaplains were avoiding AIDS patients in the hospitals, so I went,” he said. “I thought work with people with AIDS would be a very Franciscan thing.”

Explaining his desire to work with people living with AIDS and HIV, Father Charles described one of the main events in the life of Saint Francis: his encounter with a leper. “He had a great horror of lepers but instead of running, he got off his horse and kissed him,” Father Charles said. “That was Francis’s moment of conversion. It’s always been part of the Franciscan tradition to go to those who are outside, on the edges.”

After working to help people with AIDS on Long Island and chairing a national AIDS conference, Father McCarron become parish outreach developer for HIV and AIDS at Catholic Charities Health Services. In this role, he was in the difficult position of being on the front line for controversial issues where the official teaching of the Church and the pastoral response were not always the same. “When there was a question from Newsday, it would often get referred to me,” he said.

He took a leave of absence, got a law degree, and Catholic Charities invited him to come back as the administrator of the AIDS programs, but not in a religious capacity.

During this period, his connection to the Catholic Church was changing.

During the years he worked at Catholic Charities, Father Charles began to attend an Episcopal Church in Forest Hills, Queens. “The Episcopal Church is very open and welcoming,” he said. “It’s a liturgical church, an ancient church.”

He approached Bishop Walker of the Long Island Episcopal Diocese and asked if he would consider receiving him as an Episcopal priest. When an Anglican becomes a Catholic, it’s called “Swimming the Tiber,” a reference to the Roman river. Father McCarron decided to “Swim the Thames.”

With Bishop Walker’s help, Father Charles spent two years studying to get an Anglican degree at the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan, spending two months in the Church of Uganda working in their AIDS program. He became vicar at the Church of the Resurrection in Queens, a landmark church in terrible physical and financial condition that had not had a permanent priest for 15 years. “It’s a beautiful church, but it was falling apart,” Father Charles said. “I got government grants and helped rebuild the place and put it on stable footing.”

While still the vicar at the Church of the Resurrection, he was asked to take over administration of Family Consultation Services, a troubled agency with financial and personnel issues. Later he started Great Neck Episcopal Ministries, and then went to be vicar of St. Lawrence of Canterbury in Dix Hills. “But I always wanted to be a parish priest again,” he said. “They asked me to consider coming here.”

With the exception of a ferry-to-ferry tour eight years ago, Father Charles had little experience with Shelter Island until he was asked about the St. Mary’s post. “I went on retreat and brought the Chamber of Commerce Shelter Island map, thumbtacked it to the wall, and prayed about it,” he said. “By the end of the retreat, I had decided this would be my new adventure.”

“I’ve had a very hectic life,” Father Charles added. “With my monastic training, it doesn’t worry me, the quiet of the winter. I’m single, I’m alone, and so I had no problem with that. It’s a different kind of ministry. It certainly is rural, but it’s a special kind of rural.”

Less than a week after Father Charles arrived, he met with Father Peter de Sanctis of Our Lady of the Isle and Pastor Stephen Fearing of Shelter Island Presbyterian Church over drinks. “We’re not competing.

There is the sense that we all bring something different,” Father Charles said, “keeping our diversity and the unique gifts of our traditions. Respecting each other.”

His goal is to help define the mission of St. Mary’s, “to help figure out what we should all be doing together, to surface our unique approach as Anglicans.”

“I have to be willing to change myself to be part of the community,” Father Charles said. “I look forward to living into my new life here.”

10/28/2014

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO |Laura Dickerson on the patio of the Shelter Island Library

Published on October 23, 2014 in the Shelter Island Reporter

Laura Dickerson’s beautiful blue eyes have seen great places, read great books and taken in great experiences.

The assistant director of the Shelter Island Library, Laura taught dance for 26 years and is a choreographer. She is the embodiment of a life-long learner, always open to new experiences and ideas.

Like many Shelter Islanders who have seen many places to live, she chose this one.

Laura grew up in Garden City, went to American University in Washington, D.C., and lived and worked in New York City and Riverhead before moving here. “My parents bought a summer house out here when I was 8 years old on Ram Island. It was idyllic,” Laura said. “We would get up in the morning, put on our bathing suits and let the weather dictate whether we would swim or clam or sail.”

Steve Dickerson, Laura’s husband, is a Shelter Island native, but they didn’t meet until mutual friends introduced them when Laura was in college. “He’s pretty special,” she allowed. After living in Riverhead, the couple made their way back to Shelter Island. Their children, Erin and Keith, are now 23 and 16 respectively, but Laura said, “My mother still calls me ‘kid.’”

She danced “a little bit,” but her real interest was teaching. For years she ran a dance school in the building that is now the Candlelite Inn. At 600 square feet, the studio was so tiny her students had to learn quickly to control their movements. “I had to teach good, really good technique,” Laura said.

Her students came from the North and South forks, ranging in age from 3 to 77. “The adults wanted to learn,” she said, “just as much as the children. They usually asked a lot of questions, which I love. I never discourage anyone from learning to dance. It’s wonderful for the body, soul and mind.”

After years of teaching dance, Laura began to feel the balance of work and family shifting. “I had backed off on a lot of my teaching with two children,” she said. “Very erratic hours when you are teaching and a lot of nights and weekends. It’s tough.” She was “ready for a change of scenery. I like change.”

Laura got a literal change of scenery when she took on the role of choreographer for the annual Shelter Island School Drama Club musical productions. She choreographed such memorable productions as “Zombie Prom” and “Young Frankenstein.”

Laura started at the Shelter Island Library working at the circulation desk, “the best place to be in the library,” as she put it. Conversations can lead anywhere. “One gentleman came in and asked about a book called ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring,’ and we were talking about the book and the movie made from it. A few days later he came by and said, ‘That painting the book is about, it’s in the Frick Museum in the city.’ I had to go into the city, so I went to the Frick and there it was. I got chills when I saw it.”

Biggest fine for overdue books? It was for several items that were so long overdue that the patron paid for replacements — the fine totaled about $180. But she pointed out that the automated system the library uses to send overdue notices gives most patrons a chance to return or renew them before it’s too late.Laura has been with the library nine years. “It’s an incredible library, when you consider the size of the library itself, the size of the collection, the size of the staff,” she said. “What’s accomplished here is amazing.”

Laura never tires of hearing second-home patrons tell her that Shelter Island’s library is much better than their hometown’s. “It’s always changing, it’s not static, always ready to keep up with innovations,” she said, “Essentially, it’s an information center, to have access to keep up with the trends out there.”

For Laura, the library is what her dance studio was — a place for people of all ages to come together and learn. From the monthly adult book club she organizes — “The best discussions are the ones where a few people just did not care for the book” — to the 2Rs4Fun —“a priceless program for kids” — the library is a welcoming place, and not just for readers.

“A lot of boys come here in the afternoon, and some are avid readers, and some not,” she noted. “But they are here and that’s good.”

Ever the life-long learner, Laura is working toward an online master’s degree in library science at San Jose State and keeps up with the latest library practices. She won a “Dewey” last month, a scholarship to attend the next New York State Library Association conference in Saratoga Springs, New York.

“It was a surprise,” she said. “I’ve never been to that conference. It will be fun to explore.”

Laura was a member of the committee at Shelter Island Presbyterian Church that found the newly ordained Pastor Stephen Fearing in June 2014. “It was very interesting to learn how the church is run,” she said, “a wonderful learning experience. I was very fortunate to be part of it.”

But no surprise here from a person who seeks out and thrives on learning and experience.